A total of 3.943 million Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933, chief researcher at the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Natalia Levchuk has said.
“We carried out a demographic reconstruction, taking into account the information of the Census of the Soviet Union in 1926 and 1939… There is an opinion that there are both common factors and differences in the causes and consequences of the famine in Ukraine and other regions of the Soviet Union. In Ukraine in 1933, the famine has grown into Holodomor genocide. According to our estimates, the losses of the Soviet Union’s population reached 8.7 million in 1932-1934. In absolute terms, Ukraine suffered the biggest losses – 3.943 million people,” she said at a news conference in Kyiv on Nov. 23.
According to Levchuk, at that time the population of Ukraine was 30-31 million people, and the population of the Soviet Union was 104-105 million.
The first place in terms of relative losses is occupied by Kazakhstan (22.4 percent), followed by Ukraine (13.3 percent), Russia (3.2 percent), and Belarus (1.3 percent).
“Ukraine’s losses as a whole are 3.943 million people. These are direct losses, and the birth deficit is about 600,000 people. The peasants were most affected. But of the total number, about 300,000 are losses among the urban population. In relative terms, these are 16 percent of peasants and 4 percent of city residents,” Levchuk said.
According to the demographer, from the then seven regions of Ukraine, the most affected areas were Kyiv and Kharkiv regions where over a million people died, and the lowest losses were recorded in Chernihiv and Donetsk regions.
“In the first two [regions] relative losses among peasants were 23 percent and 24 percent, but in Chernihiv and Donetsk regions they were 5 percent and 9 percent,” she said.
Levchuk said that the forest-steppe regions suffered the most from the Holodomor, as they did not play a decisive role in grain procurement. At the same time, the famine in Russia was observed in key grain regions.
“Our results give additional grounds to assert that significant high losses in certain regions are associated not with their grain specialization, but with a complex of political and social factors. This abnormal mortality was the result of cruel political decisions and measures of the central authorities,” she said.
